8 Creative Ways To Increase Your Awareness of God's Nearness in the Day-to-Day

Hi friends!

The turning of your heart toward the Father in the midst of your day-in, day-out routines and circumstances absolutely delights His heart.  Focusing on His nearness can also dramatically alter our days: they are transformed from feeling mundane, to being filled with anticipation of divine encounter.  

God is always pursuing our hearts. In every single moment and every single circumstance of our lives.

Here are some creative, practical suggestions of how to increase your awareness of God's nearness and His pursuit of your heart in the midst of the plain ol' NORMALness of life.

1. Start out by leaning in.  Before your feet hit the floor every morning, pull your heart-priorities into order.  Confess your dependence on Him for every breath and every moment.  Trust Him to strengthen you and encounter you throughout your day.  Choose, in those first few moments of your day, to tune your heart in to His nearness and His tender pursuit of your heart.

2. Worship, worship, worship.  Playing worship music (hello, Pandora.com!) and singing from my heart to the Lord helps cut through a cranky atmosphere in our home, especially in the mornings when my son and his... ahem... mommy are often whiny and out of sorts.  Worship really does - it helps change the atmosphere.  The atmosphere of our homes, and the atmosphere of our hearts.  Declaring and agreeing with the truth of who God is aligns our hearts underneath that truth.  It changes our perspective and the way we experience the events of our day. (Important thought: If worship music is becoming just background noise, it often helps if I turn it off for a while and use other methods to stay aware of God's presence and voice.)

3. Meditate on Scripture.  Write it on sticky notes, note cards, etc.  Play recordings of it.  Choose verses in which the Lord highlights aspects of His heart toward you or His presence with you, and post them around your house.  Memorize and meditate on them.  Contemplate His heart as He reveals it to you through His Word.  (Verses I love:  Zephaniah 3:17, Psalm 42:8, Psalm 40:1, Deut. 31:6, Phil. 4:13, Matt. 11:28-30, Psalm 18, Psalm 139.)  I'd love to hear your suggestions of other verses in which you've encountered God's heart toward you in the comments.

4. Pray quick prayers to refocus your heart on His nearness.  Again, post sticky notes around your kitchen or office or wherever you spend the most time.  Write quick, one-sentence prayers on them that you can pray in 10 seconds or less, in the midst of whatever else you have going on, that will help reorient you to God's nearness and His pursuit of your heart.  Example: "Father, thank You that whether I'm aware of You or not, You are lovingly attentive to my heart and every detail of my life."  (Examples of more quick prayers to refocus your heart on His nearness can be found in my new (FREE!) e-book, Stillness Manifesto: A Call to NON-Action  (Complete with NON-Instructions).

5. Take note of His tangible nearness, and thank Him.  Pause periodically throughout your day.  30 seconds here, 2 minutes there.  In that brief window of time, ask the Lord to remind you of a moment or two thus far in your day during which His presence and/or voice was real and tangible to you.  Thank Him for making you aware of Him in those moments.  Repent for the moments in which you weren't tuned in to His nearness and ask Him to increase your awareness of Him.  We have not because we ask not, right? (James 4:2)

6. Your work can be worship.  Consider your daily tasks, whether you're parenting, cleaning, cooking, working a job, caring for an ill parent.  Whatever your season, whatever the Lord has put before you to do, turn your heart toward Him frequently in the midst of it.  Ask Him to remind you that He's there, to grab your attention periodically.  Remind yourself that when you do your work with excellence, as unto the Lord, He receives it as worship.  And He is right there, closer than your next breath, empowering you and offering grace for every. single. thing. He asks of you.  He invites you to step by faith into doing all of it in His strength and not your own.  And then, by faith, hear His "WELL DONE" as He whispers it to your heart in those moments.  Your lifestyle of worship delights His heart SO. MUCH.

7. Respond to Him in the hard stuff.  During your day, when a particular moment or circumstance is stressful or frustrating or makes you downright mad, pause.  As difficult as it may be to wrangle your emotions in that moment, turn your heart toward the Lord and briefly ask Him to show you how you can respond to Him in the midst of THIS moment, of THIS circumstance.  "God, what is your invitation to me right now?  How can I respond to you in this?"  He will be faithful to show you.  Responding well to His invitations in the midst of the difficult moments will dramatically change the way you experience those moments.  Situations that would otherwise have made you want to pull your hair out will become opportunities to experience His grace and peace and empowerment in a new way.

8. Practice stillness before the Lord regularly, as a spiritual discipline.  Make this a regular piece of your time with the Lord, in addition to prayer, worship, scripture, etc.  It will probably start out feeling like just that - a discipline.  But as you cultivate stillness as a regular piece of your life in God, resting with Him in this way will begin to be something that you look forward to.  God will use these times with Him to bring so, so much LIFE to your heart.  Experiencing God in times of stillness has revolutionized my walk with Him.  I've learned to focus on and know, in my gut, His nearness to me in those moments of stillness.  As I've learned to be aware of Him in those moments, that awareness has begun to carry over into the rest of my days.  I'm learning to be still and in tune with His whispers on the inside when I must be busy on the outside.  Stillness before Him becomes a heart atmosphere that, the more we practice it externally, the more we can carry it with us inside.  And stillness can be practiced in as few as 5-10 minutes a day.  

For 30 pages of info on learning to cultivate stillness as a piece of your life in God, I invite you to download my free e-book, Stillness Manifesto: A Call to NON-Action (Complete with Step-by-Step NON-Instructions). Just click the link and enter your email address to subscribe to receive my monthly e-newsletter.  When you confirm your subscription, you'll receive the private link to download the e-book.  

You can, of course, unsubscribe from my list at any time (though I do hope you'll stick around!), but the e-book will be yours forever and ever. :)

Blessings to you all, friends!  To those of you who are new subscribers in the last few days, WELCOME!!  I am so genuinely happy to have you all here.  May you continue to find blessing and encouragement for your heart here.  

And may you experience God's clear, tender leadership of your heart as you learn to tune in to His nearness more and more, day by day.

You are so loved by your Father.  So, SO dearly loved.

***Are there other ways you've discovered that help you to stay aware of God's nearness to you in the midst of your day-to-day life?  Please comment and share with us!***

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WHY I DO WHAT I DO: My World View [And...A Blog Party? Count Me In!]

Howdy friends, new and old!  So happy to have you here today.  Genuinely.  For real. :)

So I wanted to share something with you...  It's a little raw and still needs some tweaking... but... 

... I'm taking this writing course online.  In it, we were encouraged to define and clarify our worldview, the premise, truth, or perspective based upon which we write.  It took me several days of processing. This is what I came up with.

All of my writing flows from this:

World View and Core Message

of
Moments and Invitations

God is continually pursuing our hearts.  All of us.  All the time.  In everything.

He is veiled, waiting beneath our life circumstances and daily moments... in these places where, much of the time, we least expect to find Him.

He hides, not to keep Himself from us, but in order to engage our hearts in the mystery and anticipation of learning to discover His nearness and pursuit.

The passion of His heart is to make Himself known to us in the midst of ALL of life:  The mundane, the beautiful, and the gut-wrenchingly painful.

His loving attentiveness to us, to even the smallest details of our hearts, desires, lives... is constant.

Incredible truth: His attending to us is not dependent upon our attentiveness to Him.  He adores and attends to us whether or not we acknowledge Him.  (Check out Psalm 139 if you haven't lately.  Read it through the lens of noticing how He tenderly attends to our every detail.)

When we begin to "attend to His attention to us," to learn to discern and respond to His nearness, His invitations to us within our every moment and circumstance - we discover what it means to walk intimately with Him on a day-in, day-out, moment-by-moment level.  

We learn to know Him daily, experientially.  To see His passionate, loving pursuit of our hearts in everything.  There is NEVER a moment in which He is not seeking more of our trust, more of our heart.  There is NO circumstance in which He is not present, desiring to make Himself known.

And knowing Him like this?  It brings....

• Joy in the midst of pressure.
• Peace in the midst of pain.
• Righteous responses to those events in life that just make you want to yell and pull your hair out.

Knowing Him like this changes the way we experience our lives.  It transforms the entire. way. we. live.

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. -2 Peter 1:3

(And let me just say... I'm SO not claiming to have "arrived." This is a journey, a process we'll be in till Heaven.  I'm in the midst of it.  I'm learning to submit my life to these truths.  Learning and failing and getting back up and trying again.  But I know in my CORE what we're invited into, by grace.  By the power of the Gospel.  And it is this level of intimacy, this level of walking WITH Jesus, that transforms every facet of our lives, down to the practical, nitty-gritty stuff.  Everything changes as we walk with Him like this.  Everything.)

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Yesterday I was hanging out for a few minutes over at Robin Dance's place, where I entered her current 50th Birthday Bash giveaway... and, where I discovered 5MinutesforMom.com.

As a total newbie to their sight... could I just point you in their direction and say - "Check out this Ultimate Blog Party they're hosting"?  The scope of it is just... awe-inspiringly huge.

I'm linking this post up to their "Christian/faith-based blogs" list.  Hop over and visit if ya have a minute- so many Jesus-loving ladies with encouraging insights to share.

To join in the parTAY... we were asked to write a post that shared who we are and what we're about.  And it hit me: I'd already written (and been planning to share with y'all) this piece that does exactly that!

Hence... what you read above.  It's my passion- to learn to walk intimately, experientially, moment-by-moment with Jesus like that... and to see others learn to know Him this way as well.  To see lives and hearts transformed by a new-found confidence in the heart of the Father toward them, filled with joy and peace, even in pain- or pressure-filled situations, because we're discovering and responding to Him in the midst of it all.

It's why I'm here, doing what I do, inviting y'all on this journey with me.  And here I am, inviting once again.  Having recently come out of hiding... learning... that if I'm really passionate to see lives changed by this message, I cannot keep it quietly hidden away here.

Soooo....

If you'd like to subscribe to my blog via email, you are invited to do so by entering your email address in the box at the top of the right sidebar.  It's free, of course... and by doing so you'll stay up-to-date with Moments and Invitations.

(You're also invited to subscribe to my soon-coming e-newsletter, where I will be sharing a little more intimately with a smaller group of friends...including updates on my book-writing process.  Click the link at the top of the LEFT sidebar if you'd like to be a part of that smaller group.)

Thank you friends, for being here today, for your partnership and support, and for allowing the Lord to move  and work tenderly inside of you in this space.

I hope you can hear my heart, how deeply I mean it when I say.... thank you.

As always, your sharing of your thoughts, hearts, and journeys in the form of comments is and invited and encouraged.

Be blessed today with heightened awareness of His nearness and pursuit of your heart...  Ask Him for it...  to make you aware, to help you tune in.  He will not disappoint.

PS. Reading via email or reader and want to click over to the blog?  Here ya go!

How There's No Sweeter Intimacy With Him Than Allowing Him Into Our Weakest Places

These gaps in my nature, in my heart...

All of these places where I'm so beyond inadequate for all that He's put before me...

They're the best opportunities to be filled by Him...

To experience His river, His living water, how it comes in and fills in my holes and covers my weak places, actually carving them out even MORE, into GREATER spaces that can be filled by Him.  

And the Father receives glory when I stop trying to be enough, acknowledge that I simply can't be, and lean back into His more-than-enough-ness, and let Him come and fill in all of my inadequate places.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  -- 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

Here's the best part:  There is no space between a river and the rock that it carves.  If He is the river that comes in and carves out my weak spaces, enlarging my gaps to be filled by more of Him, then the deepest intimacy with Him is forged in these places where there's no distance between His heart and mine.  

The more I am okay with acknowledging my weakness and leaning into Him, allowing Him to come and fill in my gaps, the greater and deeper and richer and more fulfilling will be my intimate friendship with Him.

A quick glimpse into the practical ways that I'm experiencing Him like this lately:  

There have been multiple "ministry-type"*** situations that have come our way recently for which Stan and I SO have not felt like we've had the answers.  The temptation is to try to figure it all out, to present as having all the solutions and speak into the issues from that place.  OR... to just completely back out of situations like these because we're SO aware of our inadequacy and we can tend to magnify our own lack of enough-ness OVER His more-than-enough-ness.

But the Lord has been inviting us to step into these situations confident in Him, to confess our gaps and our not-having-it-all-figured-out-ness to Him AND to those who come to submit their hearts to us... to pray and look to Him to lead and trust Him to provide wisdom as we ask, trust His commitment to the hearts of those who come... and we've seen Him come into those conversations and prayer times and work powerfully, sweetly, in the hearts of those dear to us.  FLOWING OUT OF our weak places.  His strength is made perfect where we're weak.  And there's nothing that leaves me more in awe and wonder of Him than watching the way He works and the way people are drawn nearer to HIS heart, when our weakness, and not our strength or human wisdom, is at the forefront. 

 He is glorified.  He has His way.  We get to watch... and fall more in love with Him along the way.  I feel so blessed.

(For the record... These principles apply in ANY area where we feel weak and inadequate: our jobs, PARENTING - can I get a "heck yeah?!" - our marriages, other relationships, our to-do lists.... I could go on and on and on.... He wants to encounter us and undo us with His more-than-enough-ness as we lean into Him in ALL of it.)

Father... please keep reminding me to lean into You in my weakness, to allow my gaps to be filled and even expanded by You so that You're glorified even MORE through my life... and so that You and I can walk together in deeper, sweeter intimacy than before as Your river is carving out space in my heart for more of You.  Have Your way in me, Lord.  I trust You.

Blessings to you, friends.  May you experience Him profoundly today as He provides opportunities to lean into Him in the midst of your weakness.

***The word "ministry" sounds so formal, and if I could, I'd change it to "sitting-before-the-Lord-with-people-we-love-to-seek-His-heart-together-and-share-His-wisdom-and-see-hearts-healed."  
(photo credit: niophoto.photoshelter.com)

Hello Facebook. I'm Back. [6 Months Later...]

Hi Friends!

I'd like to preface this post with a warning:  I usually try to keep my posts fairly short - readable within 4 minutes or so.  This one... well, it's definitely an exception to my 800 word norm.  Forgive me.  I had some processing to do here... and just thought I'd share it with ya all. :)

Okay.  Read on. :)

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In August, I said goodbye to Facebook, after 5 years.  I thought I was leaving Facebook forever.  I was shocked by how easy it was to let it go.

For those first few days, I missed having FB to turn to if/when I had a minute or two free.  I had to really discipline my heart to turn toward the Lord in those moments.  And after that... I just... didn't miss it any more.  It has been an incredibly freeing thing for me to learn to do life apart from Facebook.

I've been "off" for 6 months now.  In this season, my relationship with Jesus has deepened and grown like I've never experienced before.  I've noticed a "sharpness" that's developed inside me... an in-tune-ness with the voice and nearness of God that I've never experienced before to this degree.  I have learned (and am still learning!) to intentionally turn to Him, to press in to Him to meet specific needs in my heart that I never would have even been able to identify or articulate before.  It's been literally the sweetest season of my entire life with Him.

Today our church family is concluding a 21 day Daniel Fast.  One of the things I've been asking the Lord about a little bit on this fast is Facebook.  I've been considering making a grand re-entry.  Here are a couple of the thoughts that've been rolling around in my heart relative to Facebook over recent weeks....maybe the last month.

1. Do I even want to get back on Facebook??  Meh...  I could take it or leave it, and part of me would really rather leave it.  BUT... the reality is that there are people that I deeply care about whose lives I'm simply not able to keep up with as easily without being on Facebook.  Simple fact: Facebook is a tool that allows us to keep up with, and extend love to, a fairly large number of friends in a relatively short amount of time.  It's efficient.  It's useful.

2. It can also be dangerous.  It can suck time... heart-focus... intentionality... life.  I've learned something about myself in recent months... and have only been able to articulate it in the last several days:

The primary thing that "dulls" my spirit, that slowly, subtly lulls my heart to sleep in terms of my awareness of the Lord's activity in my life, is a lack of being intentional with my attention. 

On any given day I have a small handful of moments - - 2 minutes here, 5 minutes there - - that I am not busy with anything in particular.  The key question for me in any given moment is this: What am I going to turn to when my mind is not otherwise occupied?  If anything was difficult about leaving Facebook this past August, it was figuring out how to discipline my mind in those moments where, usually for literally only 2 - 5 minutes at a time, I didn't have anything pressing, demanding my focus.  I didn't realize it till after I was off of Facebook, but Facebook had become my default distraction in those moments.  To clarify, it was never really an excessive time issue, as I never spent oodles and oodles of time on FB.  BUT... it was the 2 minutes here, 5 minutes there, at random times during the day, that continually drew my focus away from the Lord, from intentionally attending to His Presence.

My lack of intentionality with my attention was the primary creator of the "heart clutter" that was the impetus for me pulling the plug on Facebook.

Soooo... these thoughts are some of what I've been mulling over in these weeks as we've been fasting.  And then... then the pastor of the church that Stan and I were a part of when we lived in Colorado (His family is like family to Stan and I, so incredibly dear to us)... he had a horrible ski accident.  This was 9 days ago.  (He was very seriously injured but is now steadily improving, Praise the LORD.  It was pretty scary there at first.)  And as I've secretly "stalked" facebook, via my husband's account, in this last week, keeping track of his wife Sue's reports of how Ian's been doing and joining in the chorus of the HUNDREDS of people who love the Prichard family and are praying fervently for Ian's healing, I've been reminded again what an incredibly useful tool Facebook is.  And when Facebook "friends" are actually your real-life friends too, how the community that you've already fostered "in real life" can actually be enhanced by continuing it on Facebook.  (I say this knowing that Facebook can also be a great place to never really, deeply know, or be known by, others.  It's a danger that we have to be aware of and steer away from.  But I wonder, could this be one of those cases where we might throw the baby out with the bath water?  Depends on the person, perhaps... but I'm thinking maybe so.)

And so... with all of these things that've been rolling around in my heart... yesterday I called a dear friend of mine, Chavos, who is NOT on Facebook.  I shared with her my thoughts, my heart, mostly the things I've written here.  I asked her to ask me hard questions, to check my heart and my motives for considering re-engaging with Facebook.  We had a really great conversation.  One of the things I found myself saying, was something like this:

"If I have the grace and the discipline to use Facebook as a tool to keep up-to-date with, and love on, and encourage, people that I genuinely care about and have invested in, if I have the grace to use it in a manner that does not allow it to begin to "dull" my spirit again, then I think I'd like to use it... simply because the great majority of the people in my life are on FB, and in sharing that with them, I can extend my heart to a large number of those I care about, and do it efficiently.

If I DON'T have grace for it... then I don't want to." 

I asked my friend Chavos if she would be willing, if I did decide to get back on Facebook, to hold me accountable.  I do NOT want it to become my default again in my little free moments throughout my day.  I do NOT want it to draw me away from being "intentional with my attention."  I do not want it to become a source of "heart clutter" that dulls my spirit and makes me less sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

Chavos said yes.

In months past, whenever I've thought about getting back on Facebook, I've almost shuddered at the thought.  I do not want to REMOTELY risk diminishing this fire that the Lord's been cultivating in my heart.

And yet recently, as I've considered it, I've realized that, I don't want to, out of fear, say no to using Facebook as a tool, using it responsibly before the Lord, if it will allow me to extend my heart to more of those that I care about.

SO.  In case anyone's still wondering... I think I've arrived at the decision to get back on Facebook.  AND... here are the practical things I'm putting in place for the sake of accountability in how I'm doing at being intentional with my attention, as I've discussed.

1. I will generally only be on Facebook twice a day.  When I have free time to be on Facebook, I will decide when I sit down how long I should spend (not to exceed 20 minutes), and I will set a timer to keep me on track.  This will help me avoid the "free-moment-default" factor.
2. I will NOT put the Facebook app on my iPhone.  Makes it way too easy to lose focus.  I would rather have to intentionally sit down at a computer in order to spend time on Facebook.
3. I have already logged into my account and begun deleting friends who I have not had a conversation with in the last year or more.  I want to be intentional about how I use Facebook, to use it to help maintain friendships that are actually that: friendships.
4. I will be checking in with my friend Chavos, as well as my beloved hubby (and any other of my "real-life" friends who want to ask me!!), who will be asking me the hard questions about how I'm doing at stewarding my heart before the Lord well, and being intentional with my attention and focus.

THIS IS AN EXPERIMENT.  I SO do not want to diminish what the Lord's been doing inside of me... I want to fight, to do whatever it takes to sustain a heart posture of stillness before Him and continue to grow in these things with Him.  If I find that, with these new parameters and with all that the Lord's done in my heart in this season, Facebook is still making it difficult for me to maintain the interior heart-atmosphere that I'm after, to continually be intentional with my attention, to keep my focus on attending to Him..... then I will "fall off the face of the earth" again. :)

But for now... and I think for a good while... Hello Facebook friends.  I'm back.
(Takin' it one day at a time....)

:),

How Our Deepest, Gaping Holes are the Sweetest Opportunities to Be Filled by Him

These places where I am completely incapable of making myself work correctly, making myself righteous... the holes in my heart, the gaping abysses of my character... All of these broken places, they are the spaces where there is room for Jesus to come in and fill me with Himself.  

The wounds, the struggles with sin, the holes, the darkest, blackest, ugliest gaps in my heart, they are the places into which I can invite Him, the places where I can experience the deepest intimacy with Him as I allow Him to know me and fill me in all of my barrenness, my depravity, my desperate need.

And as He comes in and works deep in those darkest abysses of my heart, beauty is forged there out of intimacy and His glory is revealed.

Jesus, I trust Your process inside of me... and not just trust it; I can lean forward into all You're doing and all You plan to do inside me.  Because in all of it, You're faithful... and even when it hurts, the intimacy that comes when I surrender and allow You to come in and fill these raw places, it sustains me through it all. 

YOUR TENDER LOVE sustains me through it all.

Oh God... have Your way in me. Come into the gaping holes in my heart and tenderly work and move inside of me and form beauty in my darkness...and glorify Yourself in my life today.

How Intimacy with Jesus Satisfies "The Last Abyss of Our Nature"

Beloved Friends,

There's this thing the Lord is doing inside of me, that He's inviting me into, that I can't resist sharing with you today.

It's relatively simple... and yet the complexity of it, because the human heart and nature are complex, is astounding.

I'll try to explain it in a quick nutshell:

We were all created with longings... "abysses" in our nature that were ultimately meant to be filled and satisfied by Jesus.  A huge part of our sanctification process, once we've given our hearts to Him, is learning to know ourselves, to know our longings, and learning to allow those places inside of us to be filled and satisfied by Jesus instead of running to other sources to find fulfillment.

A quick list of examples of false sources of life (past and/or present) that I've found myself hanging onto instead of leaving those places in my heart open, hungry, longing, so that Jesus can come in and fulfill them:

**Few, if any, of these things are "bad" in and of themselves.  It's when our hearts turn to them instead of Jesus for life, peace, fulfillment, strength, etc... that they become sin.**

• Friends.  Relationships.
• Facebook.  Human affirmation... or just human (adult!) communication. (As a mom, this can be a big one.  Not that it's wrong to have communication with adults... but when it is what we turn to before turning to the Lord... it becomes a false source of life.)
• Food.  Pleasure.
• Entertainment.  Pop culture.  Novels.  Movies.  TV.  Etc.
• Pleasing people.  Human affirmation.  (I mentioned it before, but it's a big one for me and bears repeating.)
• "The need to be needed."  Finding illegal affirmation in being "the one" that others call when they're in crisis.  Eeeesh.  I so don't like that one.  It's something the Lord's been dealing with me on for a good decade or so.  I feel like it's mostly gone...mostly filled by Jesus now... but every now and then a new little pocket of it will pop up and I'll have to turn to Jesus over it... again.

The other day I found this quote by Oswald Chambers, from "My Utmost For His Highest," that describes with incredible accuracy the "settled-ness" and satisfaction and freedom from these compulsive behaviors that I feel like the Lord is wanting to accomplish inside of me.  Till the very "last abyss of [my] nature has been satisfied by Jesus."

On my kitchen cabinet.  My prayer and my reminder that He's after my whole heart...
that every longing would be satisfied in Him.

"When once we get intimate with Jesus, we are never lonely, we never need sympathy, we can pour out all the time without being pathetic.  The saint who is intimate with Jesus will never leave impressions of himself, but but only the impression that Jesus is having unhindered way, because the last abyss of his nature has been satisfied by Jesus.  The only impression left... is that of the strong, calm sanity that our Lord gives to those who are intimate with Him."  
~(Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 7th.)

Amen... Lord, have your way in me... in all of the deepest places and darkest corners of my heart.

Would you join me, friend, in making this your prayer to Him this year?  He offers it to all of us - this complete satisfaction and filled-up-ness that's available only in Him... this strong, calm "sanity," which I would call perfect peace.   There's not a single one of us who know Him to whom this is out of reach.

Revisiting the Foundational Reasons For My Existence (And The Existence of Humanity in General?)

Image Credit: ilifejourney.wordpress.com

Mike Bickle once said that every couple of weeks, he has to intentionally revisit the foundational reason for his existence and all that he does: to love God.

Lately I've been realizing my own need for periodic "alignment checks" within my heart around this topic also.  Realizing how quickly and subtly my heart and focus can get just a little off track.  I'm picturing 2 (nearly) parallel lines and how as they start to diverge, the difference in direction is virtually undetectable...but the longer you follow one of the lines, the greater your distance from the other.  My heart sometimes goes down this seemingly ALMOST-correct path for a good while before I realize that I'm several yards (or miles?!) away from the path that I had originally intended to take: simply, purely being loved by God and loving Him in return.

Oh, how I want to have no other agenda but abandoning my life to sinking deeper into the ocean that is His love, and intimately knowing His heart, and loving Him with wild abandon in return... my most extravagant love, just a pale reflection of the way He's loved me.

I absolutely ache for this...to really deeply love Him like He's loved me.

So I've just been doing this lately... revisiting my own foundational reasons for existence.  And as God's realigned my heart yet again under this ultimate calling, I've been reminded that everything else, all that's needed, will flow out of this place... a natural product of intimacy and love.

And anything that doesn't come out of this love isn't worth hanging onto anyway....

Investing In Adoption

Hola, friends!

I wanted to take a few minutes today to introduce you to 2 friends of mine who are also adopting kiddos. (In case you haven't heard yet, Stan and I are in the process of adopting domestically.)

Lisa Harmon and I grew up going to school together, worked our first jobs together, and have remained friends through the years and across the miles.  She and her family have just begun the process of adopting a son from China.  They are a precious, Jesus-loving family and I SO love that they are now on the road to adoption along with me!  Please check out their first fundraiser and their super cool Chinese picture/puzzle.  It's beautiful... and sponsoring a piece of their puzzle = investing in a precious little guy being brought into a family where he'll grow up being loved deeply and encountering Jesus.

Kelsey Kautzi and I have gotten to know each other this year through a mutual friend.  We initially connected because Stan and I were at the very beginning of our adoption process and I was desperate to talk with folks who were a bit ahead of me on the fundraising journey.... Hence, enter Kelsey and her husband Eric.  These guys have not only been a great support to us through our journey up to this point; they've really become dear friends.  God has taken them on a bit of a wild ride thus far through their adoption process and they've recently come to the decision to adopt a special needs kiddo from China.  Kelsey and Eric love Jesus and love people and are doing an incredible job parenting already and I SO cannot wait to see them love on their sweet new kiddo in addition to their almost-3-year-old daughter Lila, who, incidentally, has become a super fun buddy for Isaac.  (Whew, sorry, long sentence!) They're currently running an American Girl Doll fundraiser that they (and I) would love for you to be a part of.

Thanks so much for reading about these sweet friends of mine. They are dear to my heart and I love that I get to invest in their adoption journeys even while my own is still in progress.  If you're willing, would you prayerfully consider doing a little bit to help financially with these adoptions?  And if you're not able to contribute financially, would you pray for these 2 families and their future kiddos?

I believe adoption is so close to God's heart, and every financial gift, and every prayer, is a way to partner with Him in His heart for the fatherless.

Thank you so much for sharing in my heart, too, today.

Moments and Invitations: The Heart Behind the Changes

Hola, My Friends!

If you're reading this blog post from your inbox, may I invite you to click on the title and hop on over to my blog today? This post will make a lot more sense if you do. :)

So things have changed a lot around here in the last 24 hours.  This redesign has actually been in the works for the last week or so and was in "dream phase" for about a month before that.  I'll try and explain briefly.

When I started blogging more regularly about 2 months ago, all of these... things...these passions... began to be awakened inside of me.  I found myself writing more than I ever dreamed I would, or could... and I began to discover things that the Lord had put inside of me that I'm not sure if I even knew were there. 

So I embarked on this journey of writing these things out, and in it my heart has been really, deeply moved, I believe by the Holy Spirit, to reach out to the hearts of other women.  

Prior to this experience, I had this vague feeling that the Lord had deposited things in me that were meant to be shared with many others...possibly via writing... but I also struggled with false humility: these voices that whispered, "Who do you think you are? Why is what God's put inside of YOU so important? What makes you think it's worth spending the time and energy to write it all out? There are so many GREAT Christian writers and bloggers out there - - what makes your voice significant in that vast ocean?"

Know what I mean?  I'm quite positive I'm not the only one who's struggled with that train of thought.

I think what happened a couple of months ago was that I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to DO what I felt God had given me to do... to lift up my head and raise my voice above those little lying voices and freely, confidently, fully BE who God's created me to be and EXPRESS myself in the ways He's asking me to... and trust that He will develop a loving, supportive community (at whatever level He chooses) here in this space, made up of those to whom He'll speak and bring healing through my writing... whether that's 20 people or 2,000.

So... in recent weeks, as my mission and purpose for blogging have become so much more clearly defined in my mind and heart, I've had the desire to redesign my blog to clearly reflect this purpose and heart:

Moments and Invitations

Learning to discern and respond to God's tender pursuit of our hearts... in every moment, and every season.

These things are my heart and my reason for existence, and they're the things that have completely changed [and are still changing!] my life and my walk with Jesus.

And my passion is to share these moments and invitations and this radical journey with other women... to see them made whole and unleashed to live with wild joy and crazy freedom and vibrant, fully alive hearts... as they learn to encounter and be resourced by Jesus in the midst of day-to-day life... whatever the season.

Hence this blog.  And hence all of the changes.  This is my heart, and a piece of my calling, I believe.

Thank you so much to all of you who have read and engaged and commented and allowed the Father to work in your hearts through the pieces of my journey that you've encountered here.  You all encourage and bless my heart more than I can tell you.

Father, take these poured out offerings and use them for Your glory... whatever it looks like.  Really... whatEVER.  Let me hold it all with open hands, step back, and trust You to have Your way in this place.